Per Aspera Ad Astra
by Solain Rhyo
Summary: Stricken with sudden news, Sara makes the choice to resign from her career. The course of action Grissom decides on to remedy the situation is a bit unethical ... GS centered.
1. Labor omnia vincit

**Author's Note: **The idea for this fic came to me last night when I came stumbling downstairs in the dark. Not a very good explanation, I know, but hopefully once you finish this chapter it shall make more sense.

For anyone who was curious, _Per Aspera Ad Astra _means _through the thorns to the stars_. I've been on a Latin kick lately.

* * *

_Labor omnia vincit – Work conquers all things. (Virgil)_

* * *

Night was falling.

She stood on her balcony, leaning against the iron railing, watching as the sun bled its last crimson fire before it succumbed to the encroaching dark. Sunsets had always been something she had liked to watch; there was something poignant about the cycle of night and day, about how one must give deference to the other in order for the world to continue upon its repetitive path. Tonight, however, the process had held extra gravity for her, and as finally all evidence the sun had ever ruled the sky faded, she reached up with an unsteady hand to wipe from her face the tears that had spilled over. She turned then, to step back through the open patio door, and before closing it behind her she cast one quick, hopeless glance at the ebony canvas looming above. She sighed, a defeated sound, for what she had feared happening could no longer be denied

She couldn't see the stars.

More tears appeared then, tracing their way in glittering paths down her cheeks, and she couldn't stifle the sob that broke from her. She made it only several paces to the blue easy chair before her legs gave way, and as her tall frame crumpled into it she gave way, finally, to the misery that had battered continually against its constraints. Curled in on herself, she wept with such force that she ached, but this was a tide that could not be stemmed. She couldn't have ceased even had she wanted to; couldn't have forgotten, even if she had wanted to, that her life had been unalterably, irrevocably changed this day.

Time passed, measured only by every agonizing gasp, every bitter tear. And when finally she calmed, when finally she could breathe again, she remained where she was, mind numb and refusing to dwell on all that had transpired. Her torpid state was shattered when a shrill ringing reverberated eerily throughout her condo, and on wobbly legs she stood and walked to grab her cell phone from where it lay on the kitchen table. The number that flashed on the display screen sent another wave of anguish through her, but she took a deep breath, flipped the phone open, and spoke.

"Sidle, here."

* * *

Gil Grissom was in a genuinely good mood. He'd returned only this morning from another state roach race, and he hadn't returned vanquished this time. He – and his roaches- were the new state champions. He couldn't smother his grin as he relived the expression the former champion's face when his own roaches had finished second. And so it was with great exuberance that he sat down at his desk and began to shuffle through the mound of paperwork that had accumulated during his absence. Several minutes passed as he hummed a mindless tune, still replaying the roach race in his head, until something caught his eye that made his grin slowly fade. He read it once, read it twice, and after the third time he sank back into his chair, high spirits effectively having dissipated. His brows came together in a grim line as he stared unseeing at the document in his hand. Movement beyond his office door caught his attention, and he called out abruptly, "Sara!"

She was heading for Trace, but at the sound of his voice saying her name she halted, her back to the door, and he could see the way her shoulders stiffened. Very slowly she turned, keeping her eyes downcast, and approached his office. He resisted the urge to sigh; this was how it was between them, now. Where once they were friends, their relationship had dissolved into something less, something bordering on the realm of strangers. "Sit down, please," he said, and even to him his voice sounded too stern. As she obeyed, still avoiding his gaze, he noticed something on her that seemed absurdly out of place.

"You're wearing glasses," he remarked, surprised. Morosely, she nodded, bringing her eyes to his, and their chocolate depths seemed magnified by the thin lenses in front of them. "I didn't know you needed them."

She didn't answer, but he saw her jaw tighten. Sensing her self control was kept in check by a very thin line tonight, he felt his own irritation rise, and brought the topic back to the matter at hand.

"Would you care to explain what this is?" He asked her then, holding up the paper that had stolen his good mood from him.

Her eyes flicked to it, and then back to him. "My letter of resignation."

"I can see that." He snapped. "What I want to know is, why was it on my desk?"

He could almost see her hackles rise at his tone. When she spoke, her own voice was low, tense. "It's on your desk because you're my supervisor, Grissom."

A pause. He was unsure whether to take this seriously or not; was this her way of telling him that things needed to change between them again? He asked again, softer this time, "Why was it on my desk?"

She exhaled, dropped her gaze to something of interest on the floor. "Because I'm resigning."

Her reaction was bothering him. In the span of a second she'd gone from irritation to something more, something subdued. A shiver of anxiety went through him at the thought of her leaving his team, but he forced it away. He couldn't afford to feel those things; he never could. "No, you aren't," he said quietly. "Whatever it is, Sara, it's something we can work through –"

She interrupted him with a laugh; a harsh, forced sound. She shook her head. "It's not about _that_, Grissom."

He was now genuinely bemused. "Then why ...?"

"Because I have to," she said so softly he had to strain to hear it.

"What? Sara, please explain, because I have no idea what you're talking about."

"I have to resign, Grissom, because I have no other choice!" He winced as her voice echoed throughout the small confines of his office, and through the open door he could see heads popping up from beyond, wondering at the commotion. Sara was standing now, pacing the room with short, agitated strides. She stopped at the door and swung it shut, and when that was done she braced herself against it. She drew in a deep breath, closed her eyes, and continued. "I have ... a condition, Grissom. And in a number of months I will be forced to quit, so I – I decided to do it now, before ..."

Sitting where he was, feeling all his anxiety return full force at her partial explanation, Grissom persisted, "Before?"

"Before it gets worse." He waited for her to elaborate, and finally she left the door to return to the chair in front of his desk. She dropped into it heavily, and her eyes, when they met his again, were wide and shining from something other than the light off her lenses. "I have nyctalopia, Griss."

For a moment he remained silent, his mind wheeling through stored volumes of medical information. When he found what he wanted, he said in sudden, saddened understanding, "Congenital night blindness."

She nodded. "Yes. That's why I'm wearing the glasses. I have moderate myopia as well; it's part of the condition. With good lighting conditions I have no visual deficit. But in the dark ..."

"How bad is it?"

Her eyes had moved from him again, and were staring steadily at the desktop before her. "It takes more than ten minutes for me to be able to see outlines of things in the dark. And that's outside. Indoors, it takes longer."

"How long have you known?"

"A while," she admitted slowly, "I was afraid to know what was happening. But I finally went to a specialist." She stopped talking, and it was a long while before she continued again; when she did her voice was choked, "In a few months I'll be legally blind in the dark. I won't be able to drive, and I won't – I won't be able to work."

"Sara, we can-"

"I already read over the contracts and the health regulations, Grissom. A CSI must have certain visual requirements, and I'm going to lose them soon."

The anxiety that was roiling within him had settled into a thick, despairing lump somewhere in his midsection. "I'm sorry, Sara."

"So am I," She whispered, averting her face. He knew instinctively she was fighting not to cry in front of him.

"How long ... how long will you be staying on?" His voice was polite, caring; he was trying, a little too late, to be the concerned supervisor he was required to be.

"Consider this," she said, standing and walking to the door, "my two weeks notice."

"Sara-"he said, rising from his seat. But she didn't turn, merely shook her head, before opening the door leaving. He watched as she walked quickly down the hall, too quickly, attracting attention to herself that would come back to haunt her later. Sighing, he removed his own glasses and set them on the desk. It was with a heavy heart that he returned, long minutes later, to his paperwork.

* * *

****

**TBC ...**


	2. Inter caecos regnat strabo

**Author's Note: **Thank you kindly for the reviews. For everyone who is curious, I didn't invent Sara's condition – nyctalopia is an actual condition, also know as congenital night blindness. I researched it a bit on ocular condition websites, so while all the facts might not be straight, I shall work on making them so. If you'd like an actual description, here's an abbreviated version:

_Nyctalopia: An eye disorder that principally affects the rod photoreceptors in the retina, impairing night vision. There may also be moderate to high myopia (short sightedness). Under good lighting conditions, there is usually no visual deficit._

__

* * *

_Inter caecos regnat strabo – Among the blind, the squinting rule. (Erasmus)_

* * *

The first thing Sara noticed about the crime scene was the lack of light.

The actual scene was a large house, hacienda style, reminiscent of the times of slavery and plantations in the south, set on the very outskirts of the furthermost reaches of the city. This was a rich neighborhood, the habitat of doctors, business owners, renowned lawyers and such. The lawn outside was enormous and should have been considered a park in its own right; grass impeccably looked after, large, graceful weeping willows, enormous flower beds bursting with blooms of every imaginable color. Parked in the faux cobblestone driveway were a myriad of vehicles; three cars of the LVPD with all lights blazing, the coroner's van, and her own ebony Tahoe.

She was the first CSI on the scene, as she had been the only one at the lab when the call came in; Warrick and Grissom were just putting the wraps on their double homicide, Nick was working solo on a robbery/assault, and Catherine had a week off. Sara was unsure whether she'd been assigned to the lab because Grissom now knew of her condition, or whether she'd actually been needed there. Whatever the reason, she refused to dwell on the implications, but she couldn't suppress the sense of foreboding than ran through her when she received Brass's call. And following that ominous sensation came grief, because already she was doubting her ability to do her job.

_The job she loved._

"Sara?"

Pulled from her reverie, she turned to find Brass regarding her questioningly. She shook her head once, dispelling her worry, and flashed him a quick smile. He studied her for a moment longer, and she firmly quelled the urge to fidget. She knew he had suspicions about how she spent her free time; indeed, if he ever caught wind of her DUI a couple months ago ...

"Thanks for coming down." Brass said, and it struck Sara as a very uncharacteristic thing for him to say.

"No problem." She said briskly, and took a look around. They stood now in what was obviously the parlor. The interior style of the house was at odds with the exterior; everything, from the furniture to the decorating, screamed colonial. She squinted, trying to see into the rooms beyond the one they now stood in, wondering why it was so dark, and had just opened her mouth to ask when Brass, anticipating the question, answered.

"It seems the fuse box for this place has been ripped apart. Perp's work, probably. Shouldn't be a big deal. You CSIs work in the dark all the time."

It was meant to be a joke, a comment to be taken lightly, but something inside Sara tightened at his words; reality, briefly forgotten, came rushing back at her. Sensing she was still under scrutiny, she screwed her face into some semblance of a smile and nodded again. "Right. I guess I should get started."

Brass gestured to the right, where a spiral staircase rose from the wings of the parlor. "Body's up there. David went up a few minutes ago. I'll wait down here for Grissom."

Sara sucked in a breath as she turned and walked to the stairs. The only light working in this house was the one in the parlor, and as she climbed slowly to the second floor she realized with a sinking sensation that she was going to have to rely solely on her flashlight to see. Once upon a time, that hadn't been a problem, but now ... Outside, night was only minutes away.

_I shouldn't be here._

She had come to a dead stop at the top of the stairs without realizing it. And it was then she realized the severity of this situation; she was terrified of continuing on, of learning how much further her vision had deteriorated.

"Sara?"

She glanced down, to see Brass watching her. A flush suffused her cheeks, and she wondered with no small measure of bitterness whether he could notice that small detail in this dim light.

"Are you alright?"

"I ... yeah, I'm alright." And very quickly she left the landing, to make her way to a doorway from which a flashlight beam emanated. She paused then, setting down the kit she carried and withdrawing her own flashlight; she switched it on, careful to avoid shining it in David's eyes where he knelt at the side of the corpse. She took several hesitant steps into the room until she was at the coroner's side, and then she crouched. David, who had once been constantly flustered around her, but had seemed to gain some measure of confidence in her presence, offered her a tenuous grin. She conjured one of her own by way of greeting, and asked, "What do we have?"

David launched into an account of the DB's condition; lividity around the wrists and ankles, possible ligature marks ... as Sara listened to him speak, she tried to make out all those details on the DB with her own eyes -

And found she couldn't.

She could discern, just barely even in the powerful beam of their flashlights, that the corpse was that of a female, and that she was partially unclothed. She couldn't make out any specific details of the clothing, nor could she distinguish any features on the face that stared upwards with clouded eyes. David had finished speaking, and was waiting for her to give her input. Struggling desperately to maintain some facade of control and calm, she merely nodded and stood.

"Thanks, David. I'll ... I'll take a look around in here, see what I can find."

Apparently her bluff had worked, because he flashed her another smile and returned to examining the dead flesh before him. Sara returned to the door to grasp her kit, and then reentered what she slowly realized was a bedroom – a master bedroom. It was enormous; easily three times the size of her own. Scanning the room slowly with her flashlight, she found that there was a king size four poster bed, an armoire of heavy wood, a dressing vanity, and a couple of night tables. In the far corner, opposite of the door she had entered, she saw that there was an adjoining bathroom. She made her way there slowly, still scanning and attempting to convince herself she could do this efficiently. Something caught her eye almost immediately as she ran the beam over the tiled floor: shards of something – _glass?_ - glittered back at her. Intuition made her raise the light to above the sink, and a shattered mirror stained with something dark greeted her gaze.

"Bingo," She murmured, and began to work.

Kneeling amid the shards, cataloguing them, her mind entered a familiar place, and she was aware only of her own theories, her own thoughts, tracing a path from the mirror to the body in the other room. Everything disappeared but for the methodical process of analyzing and deducting. And when she suddenly, out of instinct, looked up and saw that someone she could not recognize was looming in the doorway, she reacted, panicked, by coming to her feet and stumbling back. Her back struck the wall hard; seconds later her head impacted with something metal that produced a muted ringing sound, and with a strangled cry she fell to her knees.

"Sara!"

_Grissom. _It was Grissom, and she had been afraid because _she couldn't see him!_

"Grissom - I'm sorry ... You scared me." She gasped, clutching at the back of her head and willing the throbbing pain to subside.

"Are you okay?"

She could hear him coming closer, walking carefully around the marked shards of glass; pieces that were too small to take note of were ground under his shoes. He crouched beside her, and she felt gentle fingers removing her own from the point of impact before probing through her hair. He said quietly, after his hand fell away, "I didn't mean to scare you."

She knew he hadn't. She also knew that he knew the real reason for her panic; unnecessarily, she began to explain. "Griss ... I couldn't _see_ you – I didn't know it was you ..."

He was silent, and she cast him a glance, only to find that his features were shrouded, hidden from her by the dark. He came to his feet and offered his hand, but she ignored it and rose on her own. Feeling almost blindly behind her, her hand came in contact with something cold and narrow, and she realized that what had wounded her was merely a towel rack.

"Sara ... how bad is it?"

There was no trace of concern in his voice, no trace of empathy. He was the supervisor, wanting to know how badly compromised her position had become. Her throat suddenly tight, she said, "I can't see your face."

Another silence. And then, "Why did you let it go this far?"

Suddenly she was angry, irrationally so. "Why did you let _your_ condition deteriorate so far?"

A sigh - one of impatience? She couldn't tell, not without seeing his expression, and she clenched one fist in frustration. She said in a tight, controlled voice, "This is the first time in a long time that I've had a scene this dark, Grissom. Usually there's some form of lighting, and I don't just have to rely on my flashlight. I didn't know –"here she paused, realizing her voice had risen, and after a deep breath she continued more softly, "I didn't know that it was already this bad in – in conditions like this."

He said nothing, and his long silences were wearing at the already frayed constraints of her temper and frustration. Finally she asked, "Would you like me to go back to the lab?"

He shook his head; she could see that, at least. "No. We need you here. Just – just take the perimeter. They've set up floodlights, so you should be okay."

"Fine." She made to brush past him hurriedly, but realized that to do so would risk another accident as the surroundings were unclear. As she stepped carefully past him he stopped her with a hand on her arm.

"Your head ... will you be alright?"

It wasn't her just recent injury he was asking about. She forced her mouth into a thin, brittle smile, knowing he could see it in the dimness and almost hating him for it. "I'll be fine. It hardly hurts." A blatant lie, that, as her head was pounding with enough force that she was sure he should be able to hear it. His grip tightened momentarily on her arm, as if to reassure her. She wondered suddenly if it was hard for him to comfort her, after all that had – and all that hadn't – transpired between them in terms of a relationship. And then, perhaps fueled by her misery, by her stress, she was angry at him for allowing himself to reach out to her here, now, when she was fast becoming something less than she once was ...

She reached out with her free hand, and removed his own from her arm. "I'll go downstairs and start on the perimeter." And she left him there, aware of his scrutiny and moving with great caution. He did not stir for a long time after she'd left, staring after her, wondering. He moved his eyes around the bathroom, taking in the almost insubstantial gleam of light caught from some faint source glinting off the metal faucets of the sink; the glitter from the crushed glass caught in his own flashlight beam.

What if, he wondered, I couldn't see those? What if everything were simply forms of shadow? Black upon blacker?

He shook his head then. He couldn't dwell on that, not here, not now. He had a job to do.


End file.
